Back in November, we learned that Walton Isaacson won creative AOR duties for Spalding, the official ball of the NBA, after a review (and not just because Magic Johnson happens to be one of its co-founders). This news came a few months after WI named several new executives including EVP/CCO Vida Cornelious, formerly with GlobalHue.
This week, the shop released its debut campaign for the Russell-owned brand, and there are a lot of moving parts involved. First, here’s the anthem spot starring Damian Lillard.
Dude gets a lot of work!
As you can see, the theme is nicknames.
Under the tag #TrueBelievers, the company has created a multimedia campaign including a “content hub” microsite and a nickname generator that asks users to answer a few A or B basketball questions.
We are completely ignorant when it comes to basketball and most other things, but our nickname feels like it should belong to someone else:
As we mentioned, the campaign is quite extensive.
The nickname generator enters users in a contest by which they can win tickets to the NBA Finals, and Spalding is also collaborating with SLAM magazine, ESPN, ABC and YouTube’s Maker Studios on a three-part summer documentary series “celebrating the inner confidence and True Believers spirit shared by athletes the world over.”
Spalding Launches #TrueBelievers Campaign Featuring Damian Lillard and DeMar DeRozan https://t.co/dTeblIe8J6 pic.twitter.com/Ni2XLVqNPX
— SLAM Magazine (@SLAMonline) February 3, 2016
Walton Isaacson will create and produce those docs, and it also led the redesign of Spalding’s landing page. The client “took over” the NBA and Bleacher Report sites a couple of days ago, so it was a pretty big week for Spalding and its new AOR.
Believers Dribble Doubt Into The Ground. Join @Dame_Lillard and other #TrueBelievers at https://t.co/sfT8WZlWEIhttps://t.co/EuGSxJCeRk — Spalding (@Spalding) February 3, 2016
Should be interesting to see where WI takes the account, but this campaign is definitely Spalding’s most memorable in some time. Credits if we get them.